


it sounds like drumming

by blacksatinpointeshoes



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Team Dynamics, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:13:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25937965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blacksatinpointeshoes/pseuds/blacksatinpointeshoes
Summary: Soon there’s only one game left. The score is tied. The hunger for victory pulses through the Tigers like an electric charge, or a heartbeat. It’s more than just a championship, it’s the beginning of a legacy. Theyneedto win.(Or, Paula's introduction to the Tigers.)
Relationships: Landry Violence & Paula Turnip
Comments: 8
Kudos: 50





	it sounds like drumming

**Author's Note:**

> so I finally caved and wrote this. thank you to @coreydshaw on twitter for beta reading, and thanks to somniens for beta reading plus giving me the writing bug. 
> 
> if you notice that there are any continuity errors: they are supposed to be there, either because of dramatic effect or because I just felt it made more sense this way. thank you.
> 
> title is from hadestown because we've always gotta pay homage to the origin of #neverlookback.

When Paula opens her closet and finds the jacket — soft, worn, a snarling tiger staring up at her — a pit forms in her stomach. She’s been to enough Tigers games to understand what it means; she’s watched the possession take place more times than she can count. She can already picture the thunderclouds that will gather around her head, the way that the red mist will coil into her mouth and seep into her pores, the way that her skin, her eyes, her blood, will grow electric.

It’s an honour. Of course it’s an honour. The Spirit of Violence has chosen her to host him for one of the final games of the ILB postseason. With any luck, it’ll be Paula’s own strong, trunk-like limbs that help lead the Tigers to victory. It’s exciting! It’s an honour.

Yet there’s a pit in her stomach. 

She puts on the denim jacket, carefully, and then her own leather one over it. She carefully fixes her helmet on her head, swings a leg over her bike, and roars off towards the stadium. 

* * *

When Paula arrives, the place looks bigger than she remembers. Maybe it’s the nerves. She parks her bike, tracks down a security official, shows them the jacket. The tiger feels hot on her back, like the patch is itching to play ball. The official leads her to the dugout, where the Tigers are warming up. A few of them send her a friendly nod or wave, clearly accustomed to strangers in this jacket appearing at their metaphorical doorstep. 

A woman whose features are so like chiseled marble that she could be an ancient Greek statue hands Paula a glass of water, pats her on the shoulder, and tells her to stay out of the way. She’s gone before Paula can thank her, and almost immediately after, a shark-headed player in a crop top jogs up to where Paula’s standing. 

_ Fish Summer,  _ she realises belatedly, remembering the chants whenever they were up to bat. “Hi,” Paula says, waving the hand not currently occupied by her complimentary glass of water.

“Hey,” Fish says, their tone laid back and friendly, and it immediately puts Paula at ease. “You looked a bit nervous. No worries, most people do before Landry shows up.”

“Understandably,” Paula replies, her eyes flicking upwards towards the gathering red clouds, and something in her wry tone makes Fish laugh.

“Understandably!” they agree. “But trust me, it’ll be alright. If we win, you might come to in the centre of a hug pile, but just remind us that you’re the day’s host and we’ll let you go. Landry’s fickle with how long he possesses someone, but we’ve never had a problem before.”

“Noted,” Paula says, folding her arms over her chest. The pit in her stomach hasn’t left, and she doesn’t want to show it.

“If you need anything before the game, just yell for me, okay?” Fish says, and they sound so genuine Paula nods. “Or Moody, they’re the captain— but I’ve already met you, so that should be fine, too.” 

“Thanks,” Paula says, shifting her weight. “I’m Paula, by the way.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Fish,” they say, jogging back towards the rest of their teammates. “I’ll see you on the field!” 

* * *

The team reads the incantation. The clouds coalesce into an opaque reckoning, and for a moment, Paula swears she can see a face somewhere in the mist. The Spirit of Violence looks down kindly upon her, and then she is swallowed whole. 

* * *

For the next game and a half, Paula is Landry is Paula. It is nothing she has ever before experienced. It is time compressed and expanded and compressed, and her heart thrums with power, her veins coursing with electricity, her arms pumping and legs sprinting of their own accord. Landry is Paula is Landry, and when he cheers for his team, her body obeys the command.

Landry is not an ungrateful passenger in Paula’s body. He is intense, yes, in a way that laps at Paula’s own ambition like a forest fire eking towards an open field, but he is not cruel. He is driven, yes, in a way that sparks her righteous anger into a roaring blaze, but he does not hurt her. Paula has always wanted, deep down, to bring justice. To decide what is right and enact it. Landry does not hesitate to swing, so Paula slams the ball into play with an ear-splitting  _ crack _ . Landry wants to win, so Paula knows victory is the only option. Paula is Landry is Paula is Landry, and they care about the integrity of the game.

All that exists in the moment are the Tigers. Paula sees the core of the Spirit of Violence, sees into the pits of hell, past time, into a sea of red that holds the anger of every injustice, and Landry breathes with the lungs of a gardener who knows her crops, smells the mint Paula was tending that morning, feels the peace and calm of weeding the soil. Landry is Paula is Landry is Paula, and all that exists are the Tigers. 

The Tigers lose the first game. Inside their shared body, Landry rages, and Paula rages, and Paula is Landry is Paula is Landry, and they vow to do better, fire flickering in those eyes. The tiger on the back of the jacket burns against Paula’s wooden skin. 

* * *

The game goes on. It must. It always will, no matter what. The sky goes dark and the wind howls as chants rise from the stadium: “Many stripes! One tiger! Many stripes! One tiger!” 

Paula is Landry is Paula is Landry. They are two beings in one whole. The fire roars in Paula’s ears, and she knows it’s coming straight from the heart. 

Their body obeys them when they jog back out on the field. Their body obeys them when they step up to bat. Their body obeys them on defence. Landry, in his way, is graceful; the game is a dance, to him, a ballet of electricity pirouetting across Paula’s skin. 

In the moment before the fall, Paula catches her breath, and for a moment, there is just Landry, just fire, just anger, just Violence. For a moment, there is only fury, and then the pit in Paula’s stomach returns with a prickle of eyes on her neck. 

Paula— Landry— both of them, neither of them, and somehow each one of them individually— looks back. 

It’s too late, because there’s already an umpire stretching a crooked finger in their direction, a beam of pure energy streaking towards Paula’s mortal, fragile body. They see their own death sentence as it hurtles towards them, but the knowledge does nothing to stop it. Paula prepares to close her eyes and let it come. She’d had a bad feeling about this, anyway. 

_ Wait. _

It’s the first thing Paula has heard from Landry that isn’t a feeling, or words of his creation pouring from her mouth. Time slows, and their doom inches forward, crackling and sparking. 

She knows what that means, instinctively. She can feel Landry thinking, can process his thoughts as easily as if they were her own. She knows what he means to do. 

_ No,  _ Paula thinks, desperately, already knowing that she will not change his mind. 

_ You have so much to do,  _ Landry tells her, and he is smiling as tears well up in her eyes, a contradiction that makes achingly perfect sense. 

And then the world goes white.

* * *

_ Thank you,  _ Paula thinks over the ringing in her ears, her cheeks still stained wet, but she’s just Paula now. 

Well, no.

That’s not quite right. 

The fires that she’d suppressed for so long, her ambition and burning, furious sense of justice, the passion that had been tamed down to respectability— those feelings were still alight. Landry had been scorched out of her.

Violence had not. 

Paula rises from the dirt, and the pieces of that fateful denim jacket slough away from her skin, until she is left holding a single cuff in trembling, ash-covered hands. 

The stadium is uncharacteristically quiet. Still. They are waiting for her. 

She can almost hear him. She  _ was  _ him. She had breathed his breaths, thought his thoughts, and even though he is no longer, the path was clear. 

Paula opens her eyes. The world is still tinted a smouldering, angry red. Her back burns, but there’s no jacket anymore, and when she reaches to touch it, her fingers brush lightly against flickering, harmless flames. 

On the ground next to her is Landry’s glove. The path is, and always will be clear. 

Paula kneels. Her palm slides into the glove like it was made for her, wood meeting cracked, worn leather.  _ “Violence begets violence,”  _ she roars, half scream and half growl, and just like that, she is a Tiger.

* * *

They win.

* * *

There’s nothing for Paula to do except take the bus home with the rest of them. She leaves her bike in the parking lot— she can’t imagine going anywhere now, alone. Certainly not home, to her dark apartment and quiet bedroom.

Here there are warm bodies, close, breathing heavily, and the part of Paula that is, was, and always has been Landry loves these people. They look at her with resentment or pity or anger or sympathy or all of the above, and Paula understands. She wasn’t their teammate. She didn’t know him.

_ Didn’t know him?  _ she thinks bitterly, staring at the floor of the bus as it rocks back and forth, still clinging to that one burnt cuff.  _ I  _ was  _ him.  _

“Do you live in Hades?” A gentle, sturdy voice that Paula instinctively knows is Hiroto breaks through her thoughts. 

_ I live in the garden down the road. I live in the moments underneath the sun with the mint sprigs and the watering can,  _ Paula thinks. “I have a place,” she says aloud, clearing her throat. Her voice is hoarse, like she’s been screaming. 

Paula abruptly remembers she has been.

Hiroto takes her home and cooks and remembers Paula’s sweet tooth hours after she mentioned it offhand and is kind, keeping herself busy through her obvious grief. Paula wants to scream and punch a hole through a wall.

* * *

It’s well past midnight when Yazmin finds her. Paula had given her space. Losing Landry was enough of a shock for one night; Yaz didn’t need to fight with Paula right now, either. There was enough history there to write a novel: those early years in Elysium, laughing and playing, inseparable; then, growing up, as Yaz clearly saw what Paula did not, what Paula refused to acknowledge; Yaz, her kind, gentle face furrowed in anger, her pleas falling uselessly away from Paula’s crisp, pressed suit. 

Paula had always called it a “falling out,” and refused to speak of it, and Yaz had been considerate enough not to rake her over the coals to the press. Even then, Paula didn’t look back.

And now Paula has found herself on Hiroto’s stoop with her head between her hands when Yazmin sits down next to her with a quiet clop of hooves. Their past flashes through her mind, good and bad, and Paula sighs. “I’m sorry,” she mumbles, long overdue. 

“That wasn’t what I came here to talk about,” Yaz replies, with a soft smile.

“Yeah, well.” Paula kicks a rock. “I’m still sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“It wasn’t.”

“It’s  _ okay,”  _ Yaz repeats, laughing a little as she shakes her head. “You’ve always been so stubborn.”

The brand on Paula’s back flares with agreement. “You deserved a better friend,” she says, and doesn’t know whether she’s talking about then, or now.

Yaz seems to get it right away. Yaz always does. “That wasn’t your fault,” she says gently, but there are tears in her eyes. 

Despite herself, Paula reaches out. First she takes Yaz’s hand, then pulls her into a hug, one that says,  _ I’m sorry,  _ and  _ forgive me  _ and  _ forgive yourself.  _ They had put the past aside for the game, but Yaz is setting it down for Paula’s sake, and for her own. 

Paula vows, in that hug, to change. To do better. To  _ be _ better.

Yaz seems to understand. Yaz always does.

* * *

They win, and then they lose. The lightning above the stadium is pleased with their efforts, and as it crackles, so does the brand on Paula’s back. Her eyes still glow; her blood still runs electric. When she plays, Paula is Paula is Landry is Paula. It’s not the same, but it’s still halfway holy, and wholly violent. 

Fish starts to greet her before games, a certain sadness in their eyes. The politeness in Hiroto’s smile goes from forced to genuine the more Paula plays. Moody welcomes her with open— well, not arms, but close enough. Zion is kind, and sweet, and always ready for a conversation. Nagomi seems to respect her as she proves herself on the field. Among the many chants from the stands, Paula can hear, “Turn up for Turnip!” whenever she’s up to bat. 

“Do it for Violence,” though, is the call that always makes her breath halt in her chest, stirring up that familiar fire.  _ Of course,  _ she tries to say, with just her burning eyes.  _ Who else would this be for? _

* * *

Soon there’s only one game left. The score is tied. The hunger for victory pulses through the Tigers like an electric charge, or a heartbeat. It’s more than just a championship, it’s the beginning of a legacy. They  _ need  _ to win.

* * *

And they do. The team comes together with one final push for the man now scattered in the storm clouds. They win for the demon they loved, and who loved them. 

After the final game, Paula is swept up in a hug, just like Fish warned, and she doesn’t call out to anyone that she’s not meant to be there. And as lightning crackles above the stadium, Paula swears that the blaze inside her flickers with approval. 

Wrapped up in the arms of their teammates, the loss still fresh in their bodies and minds, the Tigers celebrate. They do what they can to look to the future, and turn from the past. They make do with these moments in between. And Paula? 

She’s a Tiger too, now, you see. She carries their burdens too. Paula, with the grief on her back, may not be happy. 

But she is home.

**Author's Note:**

> many thanks for reading! enjoy your day and please don't forget to check out #blaseballcares on twitter!!


End file.
